Bulgaria has not given up its ambition to host the 29th Climate Change Conference (COP29) in 2024, the Foreign Affairs Ministry told EURACTIV Bulgaria on Monday.
This year’s edition of the conference will be held in the United Arab Emirates. Environmental groups reacted strongly to the choice to host a country linked to large-scale fossil fuel extraction. The choice of chairman in the person of Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, who is the industry minister of the emirates and acting director of the country’s national oil company, is also problematic.
The chairmanship of the Conference is determined on a rotational basis between the five regional groups of the UN, and in 2024 it will be the turn of the one to which Bulgaria belongs – the Eastern European regional group.
At the end of last year, Armenia, Belarus, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria expressed interest and intention to raise candidacies. Out of the four hopefuls, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria the main candidates in the running.
In response to a question about what resources are needed for the success of the candidacy, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry announced that due to the greatly changed dynamics in the relations between the countries in the regional group due to the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the main factor is the possibility of reaching a consensus.
President Rumen Radev stated at the last climate conference that “Bulgaria has wonderful natural conditions that it has not taken advantage of,” as well as highly trained personnel in the field of energy, especially people with experience in the operation of our nuclear plants.
(Antonia Kotseva, Krasen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg)
Source: euractiv.com
